


Tracked

by BlackNightSystem



Series: Where Nobody Goes [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Angst, Delusions, Fluff, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, John Constantine Needs A Hug, Magic, Schizophrenia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:02:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29948325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackNightSystem/pseuds/BlackNightSystem
Summary: It wasn't unusual for Constantine to spend days researching a new spell, repeating it over and over until he had perfected it. However, this time, Gary couldn't seem to make him stop.With Zari occupied, Gary finds himself in charge of helping John as sleep deprivation and a lack of self-care causes him to slowly spiral.
Relationships: John Constantine & Gary Green, John Constantine/Zari Tomaz | Zari Tarazi
Series: Where Nobody Goes [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2130459
Kudos: 10





	Tracked

Deep in the heart of the House of Mystery, John Constantine was sitting on the wooden floor of what could only be described as a lair. Although not the lowest room in the house, the ‘lair’ bore no windows, and the light could never quite decided whether it wanted to shine or turn itself off. The cold floor had recently been covered in thick chalk patterns, encompass in fading circles. All furniture had been pushed back against the four walls of the room save for an antique desk which kept its off-centre position in order to provide John with a place to easily lean against when he felt a little faint with exhaustion; not that he would tell anyone that. Nor would he mention that the desk had originally only kept its place because John was too tired to use magic to push pack the heavy antique without scratching the floor. 

Putting the furniture to full use, Constantine reached out an arm to grab hold of the wooden surface as he tried to steady himself. The room around him spun from the minute action standing up. Perhaps he had been down there a little too long. His stomach, previously protesting loudly when John prepared himself to attempt his latest spell again, had decided that it was wasting its time and shut up a while ago. In a windowless room, time seemed to pass without a care. Or, Constantine had previously wondered, the house had looked at the abstract concept of time and, upon deciding that it wasn’t for them, had halted it altogether. 

Constantine closed his eyes and sighed before going back to staring at his chalk creation. A small bowl of sheep’s blood sat deflated in the centre, surrounded by useless icons. The book John had been focused on for his stay in the lair was helpfully laid out on the desk already. He turned to glair at the perfect sketches the ancient text boasted before looking at his own creation. Despite the colour of the bowl, he could not find one difference. So why wasn’t it working? 

Something had definitely been happening, but the consequences of that had yet to show themselves. Magic slowly but surely drained you of all energy, leaving nothing but a heap of blood and bones in its wake. However, when used with the assistance of another medium, such as a pile of chalk and a spare litre of blood, it tended to only make the practitioner dozy to the point where they could happily sleep for a month. It was more widely known as a coma. John had been using his stock of ingredients for longer than he was aware of in a futile attempt to make something happen. Sleeping for a month, though, was quickly becoming more appealing. 

Before being given a chance to get back to work, John heard a gentle knock at the door. Sighing once more, he clicked his fingers and watched as it cracked open like something out of a horror movie. “What d’ya want, Gary?”

The man in question gulped, prepare himself for the worst, and began, ”Um, Master?” 

John tilted his head back and perched on the edge of the desk fully. The ceiling above him seemed to swirl as the simple white pattern glowed with magic. So _that’s_ what the failed attempts had achieved. Not exactly the portals capable of further travel he was hoping for. “I’m not really in the mood today, squire,” John prompted gently. 

From the door, Gary watched Constantine closely. The man had been hiding himself away for two days, and while that was not the longest he’d stayed focused on a spell by far, it was approaching the longest he had been without his meds in quite a while. His usual little adventures were spontaneous and dangerous, leading both men across the country. However, Gary always managed to sit John down with at least one proper meal a day, and he always had the man’s pills on hand with a bottle of water at the appropriate times. Constantine was a tricky man to understand, but he had yet to turn down Gary’s silent help. Today, however, was evidently not the same. Gary, simply worried for his friend’s health, began to inform him of such, “I just think that you should-”

“Piss off, will ya? Can’t you see I’m busy?” John snapped at his apprentice. “If I don’t get this bloody thing to work, I swear to God, Gary, I will turn you into a rabbit and leave you in a petting zoo,” Constantine informed him. There was no doubt that he could most definitely do that, but Gary’s worried expression would never allow him the pleasure. John cared too much about him, not that he’d say that, though, of course. 

Despite the genuine threat, Gary just nodded. He, too, was aware of John’s ability to follow through with his threats, but he was still more worried about the man passing out. Zari would kill him if anything happened to Constantine. “Well yes, but it’s-”

“Gaz, I’m not gonna ask again,” John spat, ending the conversation sharply. For a brief moment, neither man moved, waiting to see if they were going to be challenged further. Gary, eventually realising that he was not the right person for the job, left to portal himself to the Waverider in the hope of finding Zari.

* * *

The Waverider was suspended in the void, surrounded by nothing at all. Inside, however, was a different story. Off in the distance, the sound of arguing could be heard, followed by a loud clattering. Closer, a female voice was chatting expressly about a magazine article. After spending the past two days in the House of Mystery with the ghost of his friend (and some far kinder but slightly more _murdery_ ones), Gary felt overwhelmed by the bustling of the ship. Fully aware of the crew around him, Gary stumbled his way towards the comfy settees conveniently positioned in front of the TV hooked up to the games consols. Predictably, Behrad was on the edge of the cushion with a remote in hand. 

From behind the man, Gary awkwardly raised a finger in an attempt to gain some attention. After realising that Behrad was unless he’d missed something again, not able to see out of the back of his head, Gary cleared his throat to announce himself. “Excuse me,” he muttered unsurely, “do you know where your sister is?”

“Hey, Green Eggs! How’s it going, dude?” Behrad paused his game and stood up to greet the other by slapping him on the back. 

Once he had regained his balance, Gary repeated his question. “It’s just that I really need to talk to her, like, now,” he added to emphasis the urgency he had yet to suggest. 

“Don’t worry, Gee, she’s filming a video. You can spend all the time you want with Constantine. As long as it’s PG. It _is_ PG right?” Behrad laughed when he saw Gary’s look of horror and surprise. He took pity on the man and let him get away with a stuttered, indistinguishable answer. “No need to worry, man, I know you aren’t like that. But Zari _is_ filming a video in her room, so be careful if you enter,” he warned before returning to the waiting game. 

“Right, right of course,” Gary spoke to himself as he left in the vague direction of the crew’s rooms. The ship was larger than it looked and hosted several corridors that looked identical. For the sake of John, though, Gary kept going until he reached Zari’s door, where he politely asked Gideon to open it. As it had mistakenly been left unlocked, he got in with ease. 

“Zari, um,” anything Gary had been intending on saying had disappeared from his brain as soon as Zari’s death stare reached him. He was unashamed to say that yes, it was a look that haunted him in his sleep. “It’s about Constantine,” he said, powering through. 

At the sound of her boyfriend’s name, Zari seemed suddenly less hostile. “Is he okay? What’s happened? Where is he?” 

Gary was unsurprised by the worry in Zari’s voice and, if anything, felt comforted by the fact that someone else was willing to take charge. “Well, he’s at the house still, but I’m worried. He’s been working for two days now,” he leant heavily on the ‘two’. 

Zari visibly slumped. “So he’s fine? Gary, did you really just come all this way and mess up my schedule to inform me that my boyfriend is working for once?” The stare was back again. 

“It’s not like that,” Gary tried to assure her, “he hasn’t been taking care of himself, he hasn’t been talking to me -”

“Ah, so you’re lonely, is that it? It’s only been two days, he’ll be fine. How about you talk to him yourself?” Zari suggested. 

Clearly, she was not getting whatever it was that Gary had been trying to insinuate. “I’ve tried to, he just keeps telling me to leave!”

Adjusting her hair, Zari agreed with John’s sentiment, “well, there’s something I can get behind.” Zari, it went unsaid, loved John. Of course, she wanted him to stay safe and healthy, but she needed her own time too. “He’s not a child, Gary. John is working, if you can call it that, and so am I. Is he really the only person you have to talk to?”

“Well, yes, but that’s not the problem. I actually talked to Nate quite a bit when he was working at the Time Buero, but now that… you’re not listening. Right,” Gary cut himself off.

“I’ll go talk to him after I finish filming, okay? I’m behind schedule.” Gary felt it impolite to point out that they were, in fact, in a time-travelling ship, so her complaints would hold very little weight in court. Instead, he smiled and left her to do whatever it was she did. If Zari wasn’t going to help Constantine, then he would have to do it himself. 

He marched himself back into the House of Mystery and ventured into John’s own bedroom, straight to the en suite. The cabinet above the sink, suspiciously void of the mirror Gary had previously seen it with, provided a home for Constantine’s antipsychotics stored in a small plastic bottle. Grabbing what he needed (Gary had, of course, dedicated much of his free time to studying schizophrenia and John himself, just in case), he made his way down the stairs and toward the ‘lair’. 

“Constantine,” Gary announced himself, not waiting to be invited in. He dropped the apprentice side of their relationship and spoke to him as a friend. “I think it’s time to talk.”

The man in question was once again on the floor. However, while earlier Constantine had been more than happy to shout at Gary, he now seemed distant and zoned out. In the centre of the room, slowly spreading across the undoubtedly expensive floor, was a litre of sheep’s blood surrounded by white dust. John watched with fascination as it seeped into the gaps between the wooden boards. Gary, realising that he was not going to get anything out of the other man for some time, approached him slowly and knelt down with a squelch.

Despite the fact that blood was creeping in through his trousers, Gary put a comforting hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Drink this,” he instructed, trying his best to phrase it as if it was more of a question than an instruction. He offered a glass of water he’d retrieved from the bathroom, willing to force it into John’s hand.

John watched Gary sullenly, focusing on his face despite the glassy look in his eyes. “I can’t, love,” he told the man. 

“Okay,” muttered the apprentice in order to fill the gap while he considered why the water was unacceptable. “What if _you_ go get the water?” That seemed to do the trick. Constantine looked appreciatively at Gary before pushing the man’s hands away as he tried to help him up. “Alright then, I’m not touching you. Just tell me what you need,” Gary requested. 

“Just don’t push me down any fucking stairs,” was John’s response. Right, so Gary was either going to poison him or simply push him down the stairs if the first idea didn’t happen to go to plan. Good to know. Gary made a show of walking to the kitchen ahead of John, yet letting him enter the room first, stepping in after John had filled a glass with tap water. 

Keeping his distance from both John and the door, he said, “I have your meds. It’s a new bottle, so the seal isn’t broken. Can I give them to you?” Ideally, he’d insist John take them and add in at least a slice of toast while he was there, but as the other man was already looking like a deer in the headlights, he let the food issue slide. 

“Hand them over, then,” Constantine demanded, reaching out his free hand and angling his glass of water away from the transaction. “Oi, don’t look at me like that, mate. I’m doing what you want.”

Gary felt guilty at the fact that he was still looking sadly at John. Usually, he only allowed that face to appear while looking at older pictures of them together or when John was deliberately looking the other way. “Of course, sorry.” John opened his bottle and took his medication despite Gary’s face. “Thank you,” Gary encouraged him without really thinking about why. 

“Don’t get all weepy with me, squire. I was perfectly happy alone there ‘till you waltzed in you lumbering oaf,” Constantine insulted. Suddenly changing his passive expression, the man dropped his empty glass, which promptly shattered across the floor. 

Afraid of how his scared voice would sound, Gary attempted to make eye contact with John instead of having to verbally ask what was happening when he knew he would get no response. Zari and John always seemed to have such an effortless method of communication that they could easily convert an hour-long conversation into a simple three-second look. Unfortunately, Gary did not possess the same ability as John, nor was Zari there yet. He was all alone.

“Hey,” Gary began, “John, should we sit down?”

“It tastes like blood and rotting flesh, Gaz,” Constantine declares, eyes still trained on the glass as his skin became exceptionally white. 

The magician’s apprentice, not yet aware of what blood or rotten flesh tasted like, took Constantine’s response at face value and assumed that the substances were anything but good. “What does, John?” he questioned. 

“The fucking water, mate. It’s in the water supply. A bloody demon has left some poor sod in the water tank for me to find.”

“Alright, you can taste it. Any chance you drank some of that sticky concoction now ruining the wooden planks downstairs?” Gary tried to reason with him, hoping it wasn’t what he thought it was.

“Shut up, Gary. Please, just shut up,” John pleaded while looking, quite frankly, horrid.

Gary obliged, not willing to push his luck with Constantine when he was clearly not coping. He went back to encouraging them to leave the kitchen and sit down before John fell down. “Hey, it’s getting pretty cold in here, right? Is there a fire in the lounge? I mean, no, I don’t mean that the lounge is _on fire_ but the fireplace might be? Well, underneath the fireplace, where the fire is meant to go…” Gary trailed off. Apparently, mentally telling yourself that you are perfectly okay and that you can definitely handle your delusional superior and crush standing in a puddle of glass is not as effective as first thought. However, maybe the panicking wasn’t as bad as Gary thought since Constantine had left for the lounge halfway through his rambling in a desperate attempt for quiet.

Where it did not help, though, was getting John to sit down. He paced back and forth in front of the lit fire shining from its intended location. Gary walking in to join him, trying his best to distance himself from the other man as he tried to get to the settee Constantine also happened to be pacing in front of. He sat down uncomfortable and watched for a while, unsure of where he should be taking things.

Constantine, hands still shaking, took out a packet of cigarettes from his inside pocket. “You shouldn’t really do that inside,” Gary warned him, despite how futile the argument was. Instead of preventing it, he decided it was probably best that he light John’s cigarette himself to avoid the man setting fire to the entire house. Taking the lighter gently from John’s hands, Gary leaned forward and lit the cigarette hanging from John’s lips. 

Ignoring the entire interaction, Constantine went back to pacing rapidly, with one hand running through his hair and the other now focused on the cigarette. Things weren’t looking good. As it stood, John seemed to be stressed out, of course, but ignoring his previous comment about the water, he did not seem to be experiencing any extreme paranoia. The issue Gary was having was trying to figure out how to keep it that way. 

Gary Green messed up a great number of things throughout his life. No matter how hard he tried, something always went completely and disastrously wrong at precisely the worst time possible. Working with John, though, well, that came with a whole host of other things that he could get wrong. He knew that his constant fear of doing something which could trigger John led to him being a dreadful apprentice, but he knew he just wouldn’t be able to handle seeing the other man distressed and knowing he’d caused it. Gary couldn’t afford to mess this up. He’d seen John paranoid and confused before, but normally Zari or Sara or anyone else really seemed to be available to help while Gary hovered awkwardly. This time, it was all up to him. This time, he definitely could not mess up.

“John,” he spoke softly, “can you sit down?” Sitting down, yes, that seemed good. Zari always made him sit down. Clearly, John did not agree, though, as he kept up his repetitive action. Futilely, Gary added, “please?”

“We need to get out of here, Gaz,” declared Constantine, stopping in his tracks yet not fully looking at Gary. 

Well, that was unexpected, but with John, when was anything as it seemed?. “Out? Like, outside?” Gary questioned with a hint of confusion in his voice. 

John didn’t seem to appreciate the question, however. “Are you fucking kidding me? Why would we go outside? There are wards, protection around this house to keep those bastards as far away as possible. No, we can’t go outside,” he spat. Sometimes it was genuinely impossible to tell if John was speaking the truth or verging on delusional. 

“No, of course not,” Gary quickly corrected himself, “we can stay inside. In the lounge or somewhere else?”

Constantine seemed confused about the question for a moment and looked around as if he'd forgotten where they were. “I don’t know. I don’t know, but we need supplies, okay? We need to get out of here before they find us.”

It was somewhat flattering that John was including Gary in his plans of… whatever he was planning. The warm feeling lost its effect, though, when he caught the man’s eye again and saw how frantically John was looking at the room around them. “Who is coming to find us, John?” he asked delicately. 

“The demons, you idiot,” he spoke as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “They’re always after me. They want you now, too. See Gary. It’s dangerous to be around me. Why do you think I prefer working alone? People get hurt when they’re with me.” As if in a trance, John walked over to the wall the fireplace sat along, possibly hiding from the window behind the chimney breast or perhaps he just no longer wanted to be so close to Gary; it was hard to tell. 

“I quite like being around you,” Gary responded with uncertainty, knowing he shouldn’t argue with John yet not wanting him to stay in such a depressing place. “Surely, though,” he began, “it can not be your fault. You said it yourself, it’s the demons who are hurting people, right?”

John scoffed before pressing his head hard against the wall behind him. “How do you think they _find_ people to hurt, though? They ruin someone who means something to me, they hurt me as well. They can track me, Gary. I have demon blood in me,” John declared.

Demon blood? The tracking idea certainly wasn’t new, but Gary was unaware of the blood idea. It was definitely the wrong time, but Gary had to know whether that was actually true or just a delusion. In John’s world, either option would be totally unsurprising and impossible to differentiate. “Demon blood? How did they get to you?”

“They can get you anywhere. I was in the hospital, probably dying. Some demon needed me, he injected me with his blood so I would recover and owe him one,” John informed him as calmly as he had been for quite a while. He was lost in thought now, his eyes fixed on a scene from the past.

Well, that only created more questions. “Why were you so injured?” Gary asked. 

“I jumped out of a moving train,” answered Constantine. Yes, that made perfect sense.  
Not wanting to touch that one with a ten-foot pole, Gary moved back on to the topic of sitting down. It was a more reasonable idea and involved far fewer opportunities to bring up stories of possible suicide attempts. 

John kept talking for an hour after that, with Gary listening attentively and agreeing whenever John stopped for breath. It took a while, but eventually, the man did manage to slow down until he was leaning, dazed, against Gary’s shoulder on the settee.

* * *

“Hello?” Zari announced herself, walking in through the front door for a change. “John? Gary?” she called out, yet received no response. That was anything but calming. The last time she had entered the creepy house without a welcoming, her favourite dress had ended up requiring to be burnt in a chalk circle while she was left wearing one of John’s shirts with her new tights. It was shameful if anything. 

With a strong fear for her safety, Zari ventured further into the house, turning into the lounge when she reached the door. Ah. A brief sense of jealousy struck her before she saw how exhausted the men in front of her looked. John leant heavily on Gary’s left side while the other man leant on his arm he’s balanced on the main settee’s armrest. If it wasn’t under the circumstances she assumed it to be, Zari would have admitted to finding it quite adorable. 

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she whispered, shaking John awake. In a way, she felt unbelievably cruel for disturbing him, yet her worry for his posture overwrote that. “Time to get up now.”

A grunt came from Gary’s direction before John stirred. As if startled by his own noise, Gary slipped from his upright arm he had been leaning his head on, waking him up only when it resulted in him punishing himself. “Ah, yes, Master, I am here!” he declared with passion. John sat upright and looked at him through tired eyes.

“Yeah, I don’t want to know what that’s about,” Zari spoke with disgust. “John, up you get,” she demanded while sticking out her arms for him to grab onto. “Ugh, you stink, when did you last wash?” she addressed the question in Gary’s direction, hoping she’d get an honest response from him at least. 

“Well, considering he hasn’t left that room for two days straight, and I’m pretty sure he hadn’t showered before he disappeared..”

“Alright, mate,” John cut Gary off. “Bloody stalker, you are,” he spoke truthfully.

Gary looked briefly offended before his face fell back to neutral. Insults from John were hardly unusual. “Right, sorry. Well, it’s been a while, anyway. Um,” he stumbled when he saw Zari’s gaze on him. “I think, yeah, I think I’m going to leave now, Master.”

Zari nodded towards the door, not unkindly, before dragging John through it too. “Now, shower before bed?” She received a nod in confirmation despite the fact that it was not, in fact, a question. While Constantine made his way towards the bathroom, she gathered him one of the rare pairs of joggers he owned along with an old band t-shirt buried at the bottom of a drawer. After leaving them outside the bathroom door, she changed the bed sheets in the master bedroom to avoid possible contamination. She hadn’t exactly planned a sleepover, so she, too, grabbed a long t-shirt belonging to John, which felt frighteningly familiar. Instead of burning her outfit this time, though, she hung it up sensibly and went to knock on the bathroom door.

The clothes had moved from outside, but the door remained firmly shut. “John, everything okay?” No one answered Zari, so she jiggled the handle, happily discovering that it was unlocked. Sitting in the closed toilet lid was a ragged looking Constantine. “Oh John,” she muttered to herself, hoping he wouldn’t get too offended over the pity seeping through her words. Her hand ran through his wet hair before she attempted to flatten it at least marginally. “Let’s go to bed now,” she instructed, pulling him up by his hands, and he looked straight through her. 

They laid in bed as close as they could without merging into one being; in the House of Mystery, there was a genuine fear that it would happen through the night. John leant against Zari in a familiar fashion while he gently traced circles on the back of her hand. 

“You always seem to be having to take care of me, it’s… demeaning,” John told her, sighing sadly. Silence officially broken, he took his chance to actually talk to Zari for once. “I don’t want you to be babysitting me for the rest of your life. Hey, maybe you'd be better off just adopting some kid and flaunting it in one of your videos,” he attempted to lighten the mood yet failed miserably.

Zari accepted the attempt, however, and eased the situation. “Ew, I don’t want some whiny little urchin. I’m offended you’d even insinuate that.” Constantine chuckling softly at her filled Zari with warmth. “I am with you, John because I like you. I am not, now listen to this next bit, I am not with you because I feel like I have to be. Okay?”

“I know,” he sounded decidedly unconvinced. Zari nudged him gently in the ribs, prompting him to try again. He did not.

Zari eventually took pity on him and used her gentle hands to turn his head to face her properly. “Hey,” she began sweetly, “one day at a time, yeah?”

Constantine smiled at her, moving out of her grip to lean on her shoulder. “Yeah. I think I can do that, love.”


End file.
